On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 11:43:28AM -0800, Jasmine wrote:
>
> One thing I would like to get is a flash-thingy. Are they hard to
> find? Expensive? (and yes, I said flash-THINGY - I have a fine command
> of the English language, thank you very much!)
You already received a lot of good advice.
I would only add that you hold back on buying a flash-thingy until you've
got a good grip on taking photographs using only the light that you have
available in the scenery.
I have an ulterior motive, of course: once you understand natural light, I
hope that you would also respect and appreciate it more, making you less
likely to want to go and fry the Holy Baloney out of it with a Big Honking
Raygun.
As you can see, I don't much like the indiscriminate use of flash.
Flash is a tool, mostly used as a weapon that makes one look more flashy
and professional, and to scare your subjects into blinded submission and
approriate awe of one's photographic talents.
Some people also use flash as a means of carrying a kind of virtual bubble
of boring, head-on, miner's headlamp frontal white lighting around with
them, so as to make all there photographs appear to be taken in the same
surroundings.
And a smaller minority use flash, intelligently and judiciously, as a way
to subtly enhance the light or make a photograph possible in a situation
where they otherwise would not have been able to take one.
But that intelligence and judicion builds on experience of just what
possibilities the light that is there offers them, so start there.
--
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